Do voters really believe in the change we need?

Matt Rainey/The Star-LedgerA Tax Day Tea Party on the Morristown Green.Pollsters told us before; voters are telling us now: Everyone is unhappy. Alienation is obvious, not only from government but from most of our institutions — banks, the church, health insurers, media, unions, corporations in general.

Nothing seems to work. Accordingly, the public’s mantra is: Change! In this election year, that demand is being expressed in anti-incumbent and anti-establishment sentiment and the rise of the tea party movement.

The irony is that change is the cause of most of our problems and the resulting discontent. We are in a period of rapid, dramatic, complex change. Pick the sector — health care, energy, corporate governance, financial services, telecommunications. The impact on citizens of such disruptive change is, at best, disorienting; at worst, inexplicable.

The best example of such disruption is in the employer-employee workplace relationship. In the past, the productive worker could count on some degree of job security, periodic wage increases, promotions, affordable health care coverage and a reliable pension plan that could be mathematically calculated for retirement security. Unless one has been living in a cave, we now know these conditions no longer exist.

Disruptive change, and the failure of public policy to respond to it, is the cause of citizens’ unhappiness with their lives, and with some justification. We hear, “I’m working as hard as I can, but I can’t make ends meet,” or “I want to work, but I can’t find a job.” The richest nation in the world doesn’t appear to be able to respond to current facts on the ground.

A new framework for managing change to minimize stress and maximize opportunity is called for. The key insight necessary is to appreciate the fact that emerging problems, stemming from new, complex developments, are not — and cannot — be dealt with by policies, programs and agencies from a different, simpler time.

Examples abound. Our current banking problems and the recent near-meltdown of the financial sector should not be a surprise. Most of our governing laws, regulations and agencies flow from the era of the Great Depression. Should we have expected that they could cope with credit default and interest rate swaps, and other exotic derivative products that most people don’t yet even understand?

In a similar vein, our employment-based health insurance system was created in World War II to provide benefits in an era of wage controls. Businesses now compete with nations around the world that don’t roll the cost of such coverage into the price of the product or service, hence our competitive disadvantage.

The inability of our existing policies to adapt to current reality has resulted in the not totally inaccurate perception that “nothing works.” The resulting disconnect is best illustrated by the tea party movement, which opposes the very thing most needed — systemic change to more effectively align policy with current conditions. Instead, that movement supports the status quo that visits hardships upon its membership. Rather, its activists should be arguing that even marginal or incremental change won’t do; fundamental, transformational restructuring is necessary.

Support for President Obama’s efforts in health care, energy, financial services governance and immigration reform should be the order of the day.

People who purport to be policy leaders must muster the intellectual courage to question time-honored “truths” that no longer function. It is easy to just go along, go with the flow, but that will lead us down a path into a swamp of despair and continuing frustration.
James J. Florio, a Democrat, is former governor of New Jersey.